Search Results for: coffee for your heart

you’re welcome to use this photo {https://holleygerth.com/free-words/}

Today is the first link-up for the Coffee for Your Heart 2014 Encouragement Challenge! I’m so excited to see what you have to share. {Subscribers, come on over to www.holleygerth.com so you can see all the posts that are being linked up and share a comment of your own. All this will make a lot more sense when you see it online. Promise.}

The Coffee for Your Heart concept is simple: I’m asking you to pour out a little love with your words every Wednesday. To help you do so, I’ll have a prompt each week. The prompt I gave you last Wednesday day was, “What encouraging words do you want the people you care about to hear as they begin a new year?”

Write a post with your answer, put it on facebook, turn it into a tweet, or write it in a card you send to a friend. Then share with us here by linking up or leaving a comment. Pretty please use this button in your blog post so others can easily join in with us {link the image back to https://holleygerth.com/coffee-for-your-heart-love/}…

I’ve been thinking and praying a lot about what I most want your hearts to hear too and it came to me just this morning…

{about the video…This is supposed to feel like we’re just hanging out having coffee so I shoot the videos in one take and there may be bloopers and messy hair and who knows what. But that’s real life and we’re friends, right?} 🙂

Thanks for being here and pouring out some love this week!

XOXO

Holley Gerth

p.s. The next writing prompt is simply this: “You’re Loved.” Write a blog post on that theme and link it up here next Wednesday. Or if you don’t have a blog, you can post on facebook, twitter, or simply share a comment about how you let someone in your life know they’re loved this week.

Today we’re kicking off the new series I told you about last week called Coffee for Your Heart. The concept is simple: I’m asking you to pour out a little love with your words every Wednesday. You’re an encourager and you’re going to be fabulous at this! I’m so excited! 🙂

If you’re a blogger, I’ll have a prompt so you can write a post that intentionally encourages your readers. If you’re not a blogger, you can still jump in through facebook or twitter. And if you’re not on those spaces either, you can just choose another way in your day-to-day life and share in the comments here. Easy-peasy.

Research shows that those who focus on encouraging others are happier, healthier and live longer. So this could be the best New Year’s resolution you’ve ever made.

The writing prompt for next Wednesday, January 8th, is: What encouraging words do you want the people you care about to hear as they begin a new year? {Ex: As you start 2014, I just want you to know…you’re loved, you have a purpose, etc}.

Write a post with your answer, share it on facebook, turn it into a tweet, or write it in a card you send to a friend. Then on next Wednesday, January 8th, we’ll meet back here to have coffee together again and you can share what you did by linking up or leaving a comment. You can include the button at the beginning of this post on your blog or wherever you’d like.

Hey there, I notice you and I’m paying attention. I’m listening so I can hear what you love. I want to do everything I can to help you embrace who you are and become all you’re created to be. So here’s a list of what you’ve said is most helpful…

In ten years of blogging no other post even comes close to being this loved. And, good news, I’m going to be writing a lot more for and about introverts! When I did a survey here I discovered about 75% of you are introverts—much higher than the percentage in the general population. I am too (INFJ). And even if you’re not an introvert, you likely love, lead or share life with one so the content will be helpful to you too. I believe being an introvert isn’t a struggle, it’s a superpower. Let’s find your cape. Never miss a post: Click here to subscribe.

Your Favorite Books

What Your Heart Needs for the Hard Days
I got this for a friend who was going through a hard time and she loved it too. No matter what you’re going through this book is one you’ll keep and read often. I read through it twice and still pick it up when I’m facing a hard day. – Judith (Already read it? Try my newest devo: Hope Your Heart Needs)

You’re Already Amazing
I’m the leader of a bible study group of about 20 women (ages 20’s – 70’s) and we did this as a study. This was our first encounter with Holley Gerth and her books. This is a fantastic study for any age group of women who want to grow in their relationship with God by understanding His TRUTH, learning about who you are, God’s plan for your life, and discovering where and how you can serve in the Body of Christ/the Church. You will be amazed as you discover how amazing God made you! – Teri (You made this book a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Thank you!)

Fiercehearted
This book is, quite possibly, the most powerful book I’ve read. The impact on my life and thoughts has been monumental. I know I’ll reread this many, many times. – Marie

Your Favorite Graphic

What I Hope Will Be Your New Favorite

I’m launching a podcast called More than Small Talk with my dear friends and fellow writers Suzanne Eller and Jennifer Watson in partnership with KLRC. The first episode is already available! You can find it on KLRC or your favorite podcast app. Click on the following links for iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and TuneIn.

I recently audaciously and intentionally asked this question: “What gift am I going to give myself this Christmas?” I already have pink fuzzy socks and flannel pajama pants with hearts on them so I settled on this: Permission to rest.

What does rest look like to me? It’s the little things: a nap, a cup of tea, a few moments sitting with my husband on the couch, a cozy blanket, a “no” instead of “yes” sometimes, leftovers for dinner. And, perhaps most of all, giving the critical voice inside my head the holiday season off. I’m sending her somewhere sunny like Florida or the Caribbean or Australia. Anywhere that’s far enough away that I can’t hear her. A one-way ticket, I hope.

I used to think “rest” was selfish, but then two things happened: I read a whole lot of research that showed happier people are more giving, kind and generous. And a friend said something to me that I’ll never forget: “Sometimes rest is an act of worship.”

Both of these make good sense to me. So I’m picking “permission to rest” as a gift to myself because I know if I do then this gift will ultimately be passed on to the people I love and the Savior I serve and this weary world.

What gift will you give yourself this Christmas?

XOXO
Holley Gerth

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A gift for YOU: my new ebook, Hope for the Holidays.

This post is one of the devotions you’ll find inside the free (for a limited-time-only) ebook. I’d love to send it your way this Christmas! Click here for all the details.

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You’re invited to join the “Let’s Have Coffee” link-up! Simply write a post that has the kind of encouragement you’d share with a friend over coffee (the link-up goes live at 5:30am CT every Wednesday, and you can view the Link-Up Guidelines here). Don’t have a blog? You can still write an encouraging comment. If you’re reading this by email, go to holleygerth.com to see all the fun and join in too.

After you link-up your post, take a moment to leave an encouraging comment on the one that’s linked just before yours. Thanks, friends!

I am nine, sitting cross-legged on an elementary-school gym floor that smells vaguely like rubber soles and ketchup. My friends and I are lined up in a row waiting to go to recess or art class or the library. We’re likely wearing scrunchies in our side ponytails and neon shorts; children of the eighties. The girls nearest me lean in, grinning, and say, “We want to tell you something. We’re best friends.” I look back and forth between the two of them, confused, because just yesterday the one with the strawberry hair told me that I would always be her best friend.

I ride my bike home alone that day, forlorn, and sit at the kitchen table with a cookie in my hand and my mama across from me. These things happen, she explains gently. I nod, feeling very grown-up and wise, even in my disappointment. I will think of this again when my crush flirts with me one day and holds the hand of a long-legged athlete the next. I will feel it when the conversation with the editor at the conference seems to go so well and then the rejection letter comes in the mail. I will revisit it when the whirling crowd online is landing on my site today and taking off to another one the next like a flock of spring sparrows.

It is the nature of humans to be fickle. We put rings on each other’s fingers and then signatures on divorce papers. We are employee of the month and then find ourselves on the lay-off list. We are dear friends and then time and space and life make us drift until we’re looking back at old photos and thinking, I haven’t seen her in a while. Yet we keep searching, hoping, longing for that person who will stay. The constant who will never go away.

In these moments, it comforts me to know “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). He isn’t going to pick someone else on the playground. He isn’t going to bring us roses and then forget to call the next day. He won’t recruit us for the pet project and then neglect to invite us to the celebration party. He won’t use us up and throw us out, pull us close and then push us away, whisper in our ear and then lose our phone number. Because His love for us isn’t based on our charm; it’s rooted in His character. It doesn’t come from His emotions but instead from an eternal commitment. It isn’t dependent on what we do for Him, but what He’s already done for us.

It gets even better: Jesus also tells us, “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:5). Who He is doesn’t change, yet He moves and pursues in endlessly creative ways. It’s what our hearts long for, what we’re really looking for when we exchange the friendship bracelets or say the vows or sit down at the desk in a new office for the first time. We want to know we can trust, completely, the one with whom we have aligned ourselves. And yet we also want to know that doing so will lead to life and growth and adventure. We want stability and excitement, consistency and change, familiarity and novelty.

When we try to demand all of this from a human being, we always end up disappointed. But the answer isn’t to shut down our hearts, to tell ourselves we’re being unrealistic or irrational. Instead, it’s to take those desires to the One who put them there in the first place, the only One who can truly fulfill them. Jesus “is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb. 13:8) yet He also says. “I am making everything new!” (Rev. 21:5). Both are what we need. Both are eternally true.

You’re invited to join the “Let’s Have Coffee” link-up! Simply write a post that has the kind of encouragement you’d share with a friend over coffee (the link-up goes live at 5:30am CT every Wednesday, and you can view the Link-Up Guidelines here). Don’t have a blog? You can still write an encouraging comment. If you’re reading this by email, go to holleygerth.com to see all the fun and join in too.

After you link-up your post, take a moment to leave an encouraging comment on the one that’s linked just before yours. Thanks, friends!